Orochimaru's Student
by Riya3
Summary: A cheeky kid and her overly exasperated sensei. Platonic Orochimaru/Anko.


**Orochimaru's Student –**_** Anko and Orochimaru. A cheeky kid and her overly exasperated sensei. **_

* * *

"I don't think I've successfully conveyed my meaning." Orochimaru sat stiffly in the small dango shop, glaring at the two supposedly sane adults sitting across from him with equally wide smiles on their faces. "_Your_ daughter_,_" he stressed, "will be undergoing rigorous training routines which will surpass all others in terms of difficulty, skill, and general risk of decline in sanity. I would advise you to think wisely on this decision."

He wished profusely for them to say no. Even the smallest hint of reluctance would be enough to convince his meddling Hokage that he was in no need of a student. No need whatsoever. He had seen enough of the hell his idiot teammate went through on a daily basis, and had no wish to partake in that sort of idiocy. He was a free shinobi, damn it.

"Oh no, we're truly delighted!" The woman told him. "Our Anko has always been a prodigy, and for her to be recognized by someone like you, Orochimaru-san, this is a lovely opportunity."

"She's a little rough around the edges," the man added. "And she's not good with her kanji, but she's a real natural with numbers, isn't she? Wonderful kid, our girl." His eyes took on a slightly wistful look. "I used to be a shinobi too, but the pay wasn't so great, so I opened this Dangoya instead. More money, you know?"

_Maybe, _Orochimaru thought, _that is because you were a pitiful excuse for a genin who couldn't advance even after three tries at the exams. And now, due to your negligence, I am required to have human interaction with your hell-spawn – good with numbers though she may be – every. Single. Day. Thank you,_ civilian_-san, for your contribution towards the deterioration of my sanity. _Not that there was much left, after Jiraiya and Tsunade had had their turns.

"But we'd like to know why you chose her," the woman went on. "We're aware that she graduated at the top of her class, but some have been reluctant in taking her as an student because of … well …" There was really no need to go on.

_I chose her because her neck looked quite wring-able and I might have to do that in the future if she proves to be sufficiently annoying. _"I thought she seemed to be a good match, and I am confident that my teaching ability will drain her of any particular defects," he replied stoically. It was true. If that toad-loving idiot could teach, so could he. He just preferred not to.

The two (_sane, _he told himself, they were indeed _sane _according to Konoha's standards, which were admittedly sketchy) adults had glowing smiles on their faces, perfectly content to handing their offspring over to be subjected to his own personal sort of hell. Another ten minutes of mundane blabber that made him want to tear out his lustrous hair, and meet-the-parents-of-the-victim-you-chose was over.

Orochimaru walked out of the dango shop with bloody, nail-shaped marks on the insides of his palms and a twitching smile on his face.

.

Personally, Anko didn't know what all the fuss was about. She was vaguely aware that she had been chosen as the sole student of that weird-snake-guy who'd come to the genin training grounds a week earlier with a scowl on his face and the Sandaime Hokage right behind him, but why were her parents gushing over her like they did back when she'd passed her genin exams?

All of this changed when she picked up a bingo book in a bout of absent whimsy, and flipped through to the page where 'Last name unknown, Orochimaru' was listed.

An S-rank jonin! Three chakra natures! A million-ryo bounty issued by Iwa! And, more importantly, stunning hair!

These thoughts swirled in her starry-eyes. Anko leapt off her bed and pulled on her fishnet tights. Thus fortified, she flung the bingo book aside and headed to the shops, prepared to arm herself to the teeth and show this Orochimaru-sensei just what Mitarashi Anko could do.

.

Orochimaru had expected the brat to arrive at the training grounds at seven o'clock am, just like he'd mentioned in the note he'd sent in lieu of considering the actual human interaction that paying a visit required.

He didn't expect her to attack him in a whirl of snarls and sharp metal.

So he held the flailing ten-year-old girl up by the back of her shirt, watching her with an unimpressed scowl. The peaceful morning light filtered in through the foliage overhead and illuminated her unseemly dirt-covered face.

"Why … did you attack me?" He asked slowly in a typical raspy voice that he maintained added a certain allure to his intimidation. That, along with the hair, was key.

"Because that's what all the jonin-sensei ask, so I though I'd be proactive," she gestured wildly and he narrowly managed to avoid getting hit by the kunai held precariously in her fingers. "You know, they're always like, 'attack me! Show me what you can do! Take the bells!'"

He frowned. "Where did you hear of that last one?"

She grinned, "there's this really cute Hatake guy who-"

"I apologize for asking," he interrupted. "From now on I will keep in mind that you are indeed a girl of ten years. You attacked me because you expected me to ask that of you?"

She nodded.

Frankly, he'd planned to teach her to walk on water (read: let her drown and die a merciful death, after which he would promptly report to his troublesome Hokage that he and this Anko had developed a sensei-student bond so unbreakably strong that he feared no other student would ever hope to replace her in his heart.) But this, too, seemed to be a good idea.

Orochimaru's lips spread into a mocking smile, a disconcerting line of glee that spread a little too far on either side of his face. "Alright," he stated, dropping the kid to the ground. "That sounds like a plan, Anko."

She was really a nice human specimen, slightly stocky but well proportioned, and healthy despite her tragedy of a clearly dango-oriented dietary regimen. She would be perfectly suited for some experiments on the nature of chakra withdrawal symptoms. Human subjects were hard to come by in an old-fashioned society that clung stupidly to their age-old systems of morality.

Anko scrambled to her feet and gave him a winning smile that seemed to embody the blinding brightness of the sun itself. "Sure, Orochimaru-sensei! So I have to attack you? I'm ready!" She brought out her slew of hastily purchased weapons, prepared to attack like a wildcat and prove her worth to this man with the _awesome _hair.

His grin verged on the cliff-edge of maniacal, "no, _Anko_," he purred. I'll make it easy for you. All you have to do is … survive."

.

Unbeknownst to the Snake Sannin, Mitarashi Anko had gone though some tough situations in her life. Namely, she had gone through the pains of psychological torture during the great droughts of three years back. It wasn't that she had starved, of course. Her family was quite well off. The height of fear that had resulted from this event was the inability to make dango.

There had been no dango sold in the village for almost a month. She'd had to consume _vegetables _for survival_. _Not ever in her life would she experience again such utter fear, such dread swelling in her heart and threatening to overpower her very soul.

But escaping Orochimaru-sensei came pretty damn close.

.

Three hours later, newly minted student and sensei looked at one another, with one expression filled with horror and the other filled with enough happiness to make up for said horror.

Orochimaru pulled at his hair with his long fingers. _How _had this happened? How could this small human girl be so resilient as to survive his bombardments of jutsu? It could not be possible! Now, due to this girl's _continued life, _he was confirmed as a jonin-sensei. This bad luck was an utter travesty, one to surpass even Tsunade's!

"Huh, I'm alive, right?" Anko looked her self over, carefully making sure every body part was intact. She seemed completely unperturbed by the fact that the man standing in front of her had spent the last hour attempting to murder her, and rubbed at a few scorch marks on her arm. Marks duly rubbed, she looked up with her typically infuriating grin, "see, Orochimaru-sensei? I _told _you I was at the top of my class!"

"Bah," he floundered, silky strands coming away in his fingers. "Bah."

"So this means we're a team, right?" Anko confirmed. She promptly took his state of mental disarray to be an affirmative. "Great, I have to go tell my parents, ok? Oka-san said she'd make me dango if I did well in my first training session."

"Bah," Orochimaru repeated intelligently, still locked within the contemplation of his dire fate.

"Yeah, well, I'll see you tomorrow. Same time same place, sensei!" She waved cheerfully and left him standing there in the middle of the clearing, letting the noon sun drain away the remains of his sanity.

.

The next day, he managed to put himself together piece-by-piece and head out of his dreary apartment to the training grounds. Tsunade did this with her lover's niece. Jiraiya – the idiot – had three of the stupid things. Orochimaru was the Snake Sannin. He could manage to beat one genin to shape.

When he arrived, Anko was standing on the bridge with her arms balanced over the railing. She was looking down into the slight, morning waves of the Naka River. He walked over to stand beside her.

"Anko, we must being training." It was necessary to finish this minimum-three-hour window of human interaction quickly. His labs needed some work.

She nodded, but didn't tear her eyes from the river. Instead, she extended one arm and pointed. "Orochimaru-sensei, look. It's a duck. It's even got a green neck, isn't it pretty?"

He nodded solemnly. "You've managed to spot one of the most widely seen animals to grace the Nakano, excepting only the common toad." _Children. _So infuriatingly impressed by everything. He wanted nothing to do with the things, except perhaps to find one suitable to occupy if his latest theory led to any form of result.

"Ew," Anko wrinkled her nose. "Toads. I hate toads. They're all slimy and weird."

Oh. Well, this was interesting.

A slow smile spread across Orochimaru's face.

.

Before long, Orochimaru and his new student were cleared for their first mission.

It was a hellish time, considering that this student of his was still yet a genin and any mission under her name never exceeded the rank of D. It was degrading, utterly undignified, that he had to accompany the brat while she weeded the garden an old farmer.

"Come help out, Orochimaru-sensei!" Anko called, leaning on her shovel. The sun beat down on her mercilessly and she wiped the sweat off her forehead and blew air down her shirt in a meaningless attempt to un-stick it from her skin.

Orochimaru watched from the shade of the storage-shed, utterly unimpressed. His standard-issue jonin uniform was already wet with perspiration – curse the stupidity of the human body. One dayhe would find a way to improve his body as to eliminate such discomfort – and the only thing protecting his notably pale skin from the terror of the sun was a flimsy piece of wooden roofing.

"Finish it quickly, Anko," he hissed. "I don't have time to be supervising you all day, there are experiments to be done!"

The kid shook her head, and her dark hair – freed from its tie due to the heat – was flung about with the vigor of the motion. "I want to remember this," she told him. "It's my very first mission as Orochimaru-sensei's student, right? These weeds are really stupid, but I've got to make it something to remember."

For the life of him, he could not understand what went on in the kid's head.

.

Through the next few months, team Orochimaru was given two types of missions.

There were missions that they called 'Orochimaru-sensei-missions'. These were the ones where Orochimaru would lead, and Anko would get a quarter of the pay. These usually delighted her to no end, because the sheer amount of money opened endless opportunities for a girl of ten. The clothes! The weapons! The elaborate shogi pieces! Compared to the rest of the genin her age, Mitarashi Anko was a rich, rich kid.

But Orochimaru didn't like these missions anymore. Anko was _required_ to accompany him on every one, and she happily clung to him like some sort of stubborn burr. And since she was still a genin, none of them were S-ranks or A-ranks. They were mere _B-ranks. _

It was unacceptable. He was the Snake Sannin. He completed his own damn missions.

He made this very clear to anyone who cared to ask. It had become a common sight in Konoha to see student and sensei walking out of the Hokage's tower, with one the picture of gloom and the other the picture of glee. The shinobi of the village had stopped looking into these things.

They were Orochimaru and Anko. Orochimaru and Anko were weird.

In one of these B-ranks, they travelled for hours through the forests of Fire Country with the Daimyo's niece in tow, a little girl of five who pattered along and slowed their speed by almost two hundred percent. Eventually, it was too dark to continue and they had to set up camp by the river.

"You travel too slow," the daimyo's niece huffed, deftly gathering all nine layers of her kimono while she sat. "I thought we were supposed to be at my uncle's house by nightfall."

Orochimaru ignored her, and instead set up his tent and pulled out his sealing scrolls to work on with his brush. He sat with his back to the poles, trying to convince himself that he was alone and there were _not _two infuriating small humans in the vicinity. Selective perception was a well-honed skill he had been pushed to develop over the years to its full extent.

Anko, however, was blazing with fury at their conceited client. She pointed a crude finger, "its because of you! You walk way to slowly because you're wearing nine stupid layers of kimono while travelling through a forest!"

"These are ceremonial!" The girl shot back. "I can't just appear at my relatives house in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt like you!"

"My clothes are just fine!"

"Hmph. They've even got mud stains. You would never be allowed into the palace in those."

"I'm a shinobi, they're just well-used!"

"Orochimaru-sama isn't nearly as disheveled. It's clearly because you're careless."

"Yeah, well you're a butthead!"

And there it was. The epitome of playground insults had been cast. Orochimaru tapped his brush against his head and watched in barely contained exasperation as the two girls pounced at each other in a slew of hisses and punches and tearing of kimono fabric. He ignored the ink that had seeped into his hair, brought his brush back down to the paper, and continued his work silently.

Around a minute later, Anko had the daimyo's niece trapped underneath her and one hand rose for a swift, final punch to the nose. A mere civilian was no match for a kunoichi like her. That was when she realized that there was something holding her arm still, high in the air. Something wrapped around it like a rope.

Anko slowly looked up, directly into the eyes of a glittering white snake. Frozen, she glanced at Orochimaru with a look that screamed for help.

Orochimaru grinned a gleeful grin.

.

An hour later, the daimyo's niece was shivering in her tent and down to seven layers of kimono, and was no longer pestering them about the mission. In that way, his objective had been reached.

He did _not, _however, expect the tiny form that was molded against his arm, chirping happily into his ear like a vocal leech.

"Orochimaru-sensei that was so _awesome_ I didn't know you could _summon snakes_ and that one was really pretty once you get over the fact that it _has fangs_ and everything could you teach _me _how to make snakes appear out of nowhere cause that would be really cool please?"

"Anko if you do not detach yourself from my arm I _will _provide another demonstration."

Unfortunately, that seemed to be what she was after. Proper blood circulation had long become a pipe dream.

.

There were other missions called 'Anko-missions'. These were the D-ranks that Anko was specifically assigned for, and Orochimaru grudgingly tagged along and accepted the quarter-pay that Anko handed to him ever-so-sincerely with her looks of glowing pride. He usually used the money to buy a snack for his snakes on the way to his apartment.

The most common of these missions involved a cat, an utterly infuriating feline specimen that was frequently caught in the confines of a tree. It did this at least three times per week. Orochimaru suspected it was trying to work up the courage to commit suicide, because if _he _had an owner like that, such an act would be first on his list.

"Come down!" Anko yelled at the thing. "Haruka-san is waiting for you!"

The orange cat in the tree seemed to shiver more violently at the words. It clung tightly to its branch, with large, haunted eyes that were probably recalling sights of the suffocating woman who kept it.

"I'll solve this," Orochimaru brought his thumb up to bite.

"No!" Anko pulled his hand away, another moment of initiated contact that he twitched at, because her hands were usually sticky with dango syrup. "That'll terrorize the poor cat, and then the daimyo's wife will blame me and I won't get paid!"

"Look at it," he pointed. "It's already terrorized."

She shook her head, "the mission is important!"

"I'll pay you ten times as much if you'll look the other way while I kill it."

"No! This is _my _mission! I'm going to bring this cat down by myself."

Orochimaru gave her a calculating look. "Ten times that amount is approximately one thousand ryo. Enough to buy dango for the rest of the week." Socially inept though he might be, he was a genius and therefore conducted extensive mental analysis to determine the biases and affiliations of everyone he met.

Anko's bias was dango. Anko's affiliation was dango. She was an easily manipulable thing.

At these words, there was a pause. In the tree, the cat was still looking ahead with its frightened eyes, probably deciding which angle of falling would kill it faster. Anko rubbed her chin, deep in though.

Finally, she looked up, "and you won't tell _anyone_?"

"Not a soul."

"Not even Hokage-sama?" Anko asked with incredulity, as if the very notion was unthinkable.

"I could write a book of the things I keep from him," Orochimaru replied stoically.

She bit her lip and took a long while in consideration. Finally, she nodded. "But make sure she's not in pain, ok? I'm doing this because I really think she would prefer your snakes over Haruka-san's perfumes, sensei."

He nodded obligingly, and then bit into his finger with glee. He had a snake whose bite was almost imperceptible. Konoha would be finally rid of this terror of a feline.

Hours later in the Hokage's office, Anko held the poor, dead cat and looked thoroughly inconsolable. Orochimaru watched dispassionately as the daimyo's wife burst into tears.

Hiruzen-sensei was giving him a suspicious look, and he returned it with a disconcerting smile. Maybe this Anko wouldn't erode his sanity to the extent he'd once suspected, especially since she had been cleared for C-ranks. Ah, the joys of teaching.

The next day, the daimyo's wife procured herself a new cat and named it Tora. Genin sanity levels across Konoha were on record levels of decline.

.

Months later after training, Anko remained there on the bridge overlooking the Naka river instead of running off to the Dangoya for lunch like she normally tended to do. Orochimaru waited for a few minutes, tapping his fingers against his sleeve, and then sighed.

"Anko, why are you still present? Training is over."

The kid shrugged, a jerky motion that encompassed the extent of the gloom that had hung over her that day. She turned to give him a watery smile, "I don't really have anything else to do until my next mission, so I thought I'd stick around."

_Please don't, interacting with you requires far more patience than I possess. _"I thought you were supposed to eat dango with that other genin?"

Anko's looked back over the river sulkily, "Kurenai doesn't want to eat with _me _anymore. Now she eats with _Asuma-kun_. And they do icky stuff together. Like kissing. Eww."

Orochimaru turned on his heel and walked quickly away. He was _not _going to deal with this. Having Jiraiya complain about Tsunade and Dan was bad enough. He made it all the way to the edge of the bridge before there were sticky fingers pulling on his sleeve.

"No, wait!" Anko protested. "You're going to go do experiments and stuff, right?"

He glanced back. "Indeed."

Anko grinned widely, "I'll come too, sensei!" She chirped.

"No. Go play, and do whatever it is that you usually do."

"But what are _you _going to do, sensei?"

"I shall be doing a different type of playing."

"Why not play with me?" She suggested brightly.

"Because I would probably be arrested for it." He pushed his long hair aside – briefly noting the pleasing effect it created in the morning light – and gave her a dry look. Her sense of morality was already at a promising low, but she needed a little more work before it was sufficiently lacking for all practical purposes.

Her face fell. "So … I can't see Orochimaru-sensei's experiments?"

"No."

"Not fair!" Her eyes suddenly took on a look of excitement, "wait, is this a challenge? Do I have to do something to prove myself? Just say the words, sensei!"

Orochimaru pondered that. On one hand, he would probably _never_ invite her to see his more … questionable research, but he was confident in his ability to find something interesting to show her – maybe a mutated animal or two. Nonetheless, the girl performed exceptionally well when motivated by something that interested her, and he was eager at least to try pitting her against his teammates students sometime in the near future, now that he had reluctantly come to terms with his status as a jonin-sensei.

She would need motivating.

"Fine," he told her. "I'll show you if you win the next chunin exams." With that he flickered away, turning too quickly to see the spark of delight glimmering openly on the kid's face.

.

Five months later in the chunin exam stadium, Mitarashi Anko stood proudly in front of him, alternatively wincing in pain and smiling her infuriatingly cheerful smile. Beside her kneeled Tsunade, who was working on her injured arm, which was fractured in at least three places from her final match. Both her thumbs bled continuously as a result of the White Snake Summoning contract.

"Orochimaru, why on earth did you tell her to finish all her fights in under a minute? She pushed herself way too hard!" His former teammate scolded, eyes narrowed in concentration as she fixed the girl's arm.

Orochimaru stood by stoically. "I never asked her any such thing. I only told her to win."

Tsunade looked questioningly at Anko, who beamed up at her.

"When Orochimaru-sensei says 'win', he means_ win_, Tsunade-sama," she replied.

No, it was _not _with any hint of pride that he nodded briefly in her direction, and gave Tsunade a matter-of-fact look.

"Well, don't use this arm for a while," she said strictly, giving them both disapproving glares that masked a slightly more approving smile. Anko had won the tournament, even beating her own student Shizune.

For better or for worse, her stoic, morally-questionable teammate had indeed managed to teach, if only to a kid who sported fingers perpetually sticky with dango syrup and a cheeky grin that could probably cure more ailments than Tsunade's medic jutsu.

After his former teammate left, Anko bounded over and skidded to a stop before him. "So now you'll show me what you've been working on, right sensei?"

… Well, there were perhaps some of the more innocuous glass jars in the back of lab that she would be appeased by. New types of snake venom, and the like. Orochimaru sighed inwardly and nodded, knowing that his sanity had long become a lost cause.

And no, it was _not _with any sort of hint of blossoming camaraderie that he reached over to pat her head.

* * *

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